Category: scbwi

By Kathryn Evans Sometimes, when you start on a journey, there are certain dreams that seem ridiculously beyond your reach but you dream them anyway because they just keep you going. And sometimes, ridiculously, no matter how far beyond your reach they seem, those dreams can come true. The Society of Children’s Book writers and Illustrators…

From SCBWI British Isles Members. It’s the 20th anniversary of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. It’s the only largest organisation for published AND unpublished writers in the world and I’ve been part of it for years. Holding hands with fellow writers as we climb through the snowdrift of rejection letters to publication has…

Well Meaning Pal ( WMP) “Hey Kathy, how’s the new book coming along?” Me: Look at this thing I did on Instagram. WMP: So the new book..? Me: Yeah, sorry, I’ve got fencing training, and I don’t want to be late… WMP: I heard it was much easier to get a second book published. Me: WHY…

Here are a few unknown unknowns – things you need to do as a published author that you never even guessed at: Blog posts, heaps of them , which is GREAT, because I am a massive chatterbox and they allow me to chatter. I’m blogging at Notes from the Slushpile , YAshelfies, and on all sorts of…

Every year I think this year’s conference has been the best ever but this year, it really might have been. Was it just me or did we fill Winchester with enough warmth and creativity to power a small ship? And what about it really blew my mind? Was it our fantastic, if bonkers, keynote speakers…

I’ve done it, more-or-less. More of Me is finished – there’ll be the possibility of minor tweaks when the proof copies are ready but all the tough writing stuff is done, including the final stage, COPY EDITS. My Facebook pals, and worse, my Twitter followers (why don’t they let you edit tweets? I never see…

The annual SCBWI British Isles conference is open for booking and I didn’t hesitate before signing up. I’ve hardly missed one in years – in fact I’ve been trying to remember if I’ve missed one. Sadly, no one has helpfully produced a list so I can’t tick them off.

Some writers seem to have a knack for world building, Ellen Renner does it to perfection in Tribute, her world is textural , you can feel it, smell it, sense it. Philip Reeve and Sarah Macintyre are masters at it – in Oliver and the Seawigs and Cakes in Space they use words and pictures…

The post with the most hits on my website BY FAR is ‘Word Counts’. Clearly, we writers are a bit obsessed with counting them there words. . Funny that, how numbers occupy so much of our brains. I think three deep concerns are the drivers for this: Trying to ensure we’re a good fit for our genre Not wanting…